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Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising?

Posted: 2010-08-07 07:13am
by IvanTih
I am annoyed by it because currently I have a laptop which has a bad fan(I don't have money right now to buy anything to solve this problem) and I hate when it shuts down in the middle of game and I can't save at anypoint.

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-07 10:29am
by ShadowDragon8685
Replacing a fan shouldn't be expensive at all. Like, on the tune of under $20, presuming you're bold and skilled enough to pop it open and fix it yourself (not really all that hard, it might just be scary) or have a friend willing and able to do it for free.

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-07 11:40am
by Steel
Given that the missions in DoW2 are what 10-20 minutes long, I think the key issue here is that your pc is badly broken.

A mid mission save would likely take a good minute to save and load and would only prevent you from losing 5-10minutes of play, as well as opening the game up to savescumming your way through.

If your pc can't reliably play the game for 20 minutes at a time, I think you need to fix it.

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-07 11:58am
by IvanTih
Steel wrote:Given that the missions in DoW2 are what 10-20 minutes long, I think the key issue here is that your pc is badly broken.

A mid mission save would likely take a good minute to save and load and would only prevent you from losing 5-10minutes of play, as well as opening the game up to savescumming your way through.

If your pc can't reliably play the game for 20 minutes at a time, I think you need to fix it.
It's not broken it's just that fan that irritates me(it was even worse before I made BIOS update).It worked perfectly 7 months ago maybe I should clean it or replace it.

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-07 12:18pm
by Bounty
A computer that shuts down due to overheating is broken. Fix the fan.

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-07 12:28pm
by PeZook
Steel wrote: A mid mission save would likely take a good minute to save and load and would only prevent you from losing 5-10minutes of play, as well as opening the game up to savescumming your way through.
You know, I always found this line of thought incredibly hilarious. It assumes "savescumming" is some sort of hideous amoral practice which has to be prevented.

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-07 12:29pm
by General Zod
PeZook wrote:
Steel wrote: A mid mission save would likely take a good minute to save and load and would only prevent you from losing 5-10minutes of play, as well as opening the game up to savescumming your way through.
You know, I always found this line of thought incredibly hilarious. It assumes "savescumming" is some sort of hideous amoral practice which has to be prevented.
I think what's even more hilarious is the idea that Dawn of War 2 is even really that difficult. Sorry, but if you can't beat the game on normal or even easy you probably just suck.

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-07 02:25pm
by Covenant
PeZook wrote:
Steel wrote: A mid mission save would likely take a good minute to save and load and would only prevent you from losing 5-10minutes of play, as well as opening the game up to savescumming your way through.
You know, I always found this line of thought incredibly hilarious. It assumes "savescumming" is some sort of hideous amoral practice which has to be prevented.
While players often seen arbitrary ways to state their superiority over each other, developers do have one impetus to reduce the amount of quicksaving:

The reason to deny savescumming is to keep the difficulty high enough that the risk/reward metric is mantained for the player, giving them a greater feeling of accomplishment when they beat a section of the game, and keeping them interested or pumped about maybe trying it on a harder one. This is a design goal people work towards (check the TF2 commentary to hear a lot about their efforts to keep a "highs and lows" feeling in gameplay that keeps people excited) because it actually does--often--increase player satisfaction. People who merely want to win can always play it on the easiest setting. I know of nearly no game which is not stupidly easy to win on Easy.

I can't imagine not savescumming my way through a lot of games though. Most First Person Shooters are auto-scummed by having a lot of quick restart points in the level, and games like Civ are such lengthy investments that I have no problem justifying going back 15 turns to change a strategy.

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-08 04:10pm
by aieeegrunt
I see absolutely no logical reason not to have a quick save in every game. People who want to arbitrarily punish themselves for dieing in a video game are invited to impose their own limits on when and how they are "allowed" to save in a game. I have a lot of better things to do with my time than replay a portion of a level because the developer put too few checkpoints or put them in stupid places.

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-08 04:17pm
by PeZook
Covenant's point is actually a pretty good one with regards to structuring reward and punishment in a way that increases a player's enjoyment of the game.

The problem is that level design needs to follow, because games with checkpoints invariably contain at least one issue of an immensely frustrating sequence the player would just love to savescum through :P

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-08 05:23pm
by Stark
Quicksave instantly invalidates whole design decisions. It's a crutch used by PC gamers to make everything easy and avoid anything bad happening. It's why Witcher had to space out the consequences of actions, because otherwise dickless nerds would just save/load whore through all the conversations to get the 'best' result. Imagine Crackdown with save/load whoring! People complained Blands doesn't have quicksave, for fucks sake!

If a game has shit checkpoints, that doesn't mean the solution is infinite quicksaves to ruin the game; it's MAKE BETTER FUCKING CHECKPOINTS. :roll: 'Resource management' does not mean 'just load a lot until you get through the battle with more bullets left'.

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-08 07:22pm
by aieeegrunt
The irony is that somebody who did what you described would actually waste more time than if they had to backtrack to a checkpoint. I like being able to save just after doing something tedious, stupid or annoying because it's even worse having to slogging through that again because it's miles to the next checkpoint. Every game on earth is going to have sections like that.

Stark how exactly does somebody else compulsively saving ruin the game for you? And how exactly do I use magical time travelling mind control powers to make a developer put the checkpoints where I want them?

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-08 07:44pm
by Stark
Are you stupid? Tedious sections should always checkpoint. If they don't, it should be fixed, and not 'solved' by deploying the mechanic-invalidating tension-destroying nuke of quicksave. Amusingly I can't even remember th last poorly checkpointed game I played.

If the only benefit is making up for poor checkpoints, is the answer really to reduce 'danger' to the distance between W and F7?

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-08 08:52pm
by Vympel
Quicksave instantly invalidates whole design decisions. It's a crutch used by PC gamers to make everything easy and avoid anything bad happening. It's why Witcher had to space out the consequences of actions, because otherwise dickless nerds would just save/load whore through all the conversations to get the 'best' result. Imagine Crackdown with save/load whoring! People complained Blands doesn't have quicksave, for fucks sake!
I always thought that they did it that way because its far more realistic for your choices to have consequences down the line, as opposed to immediately.

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-08 08:52pm
by aieeegrunt
Again, how does somebody else's saving habits ruin the game for you?

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-08 08:59pm
by JointStrikeFighter
Because developer cater to fucktards like you, ruining the game for the rest of us.

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-08 09:44pm
by Vympel
Like he said, you don't have to quicksave if you don't want to. Why should others be prevented from doing so?

Different people get a kick out of gaming in different ways. It can be fun to go into a situation, not knowing what's going to happen, and suffer a debacle, and then do it again with the benefit of hindsight (or foresight) and blitz it. If you don't like it, well, its really absolutely none of your business.

Personally I like checkpoints in FPSs now, quicksaves in strategy games (total war series).

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-08 09:59pm
by Stark
People complained about (and still do) Far Cry 2's companion system, because they were playing on PC where you just quicksave after every fight and thus never actually die. Oh noes, you don't see your companions what a waste how stupid!!!

On console, where you have to play it properly, you see them constantly and a whole range of mechanics exist around this system of softening the death penalty in an in-universe way. Nobody who reviewed the game on PC even -NOTICED-.

So yeah, sorry, quicksave's very existence DOES affect games, because it shapes the way the game is played. You can finished FC2 in seriously three hours with quicksave. State saves in emulators highlight similar mechanics (or lack thereof) in older console games in exactly the same way.

Vymp, the Witcher guys expressly said in an interview a big push for the gap in gametime between choice and result (the little cutscene things) was because they were conscious people in games like KotoR just cheese through conversations to min/max results.

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-08 11:07pm
by Vympel
People complained about (and still do) Far Cry 2's companion system, because they were playing on PC where you just quicksave after every fight and thus never actually die. Oh noes, you don't see your companions what a waste how stupid!!!

On console, where you have to play it properly, you see them constantly and a whole range of mechanics exist around this system of softening the death penalty in an in-universe way. Nobody who reviewed the game on PC even -NOTICED-.
I didn't even know FC2 had quick-save. Probably because I fucking hated it :)

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-08 11:32pm
by Stark
I hated it when I played it on PC ages ago, but it was cool on 360. The trick is to use busses. :D

Re: Is anyone annoyed by the saving in DOW2 and Chaos Rising

Posted: 2010-08-09 11:05am
by PainRack
I'm frustrated at the ability to save certain missions, which forces to replay the entire campaign just to replay certain missions.